As the reliance on computer networking continues to grow, the need for faster and more efficient networking devices grows with it. However, these two goals are often at odds with each other. For example, virtualization is a technique that has become very popular for achieving increased efficiency in terms of resource utilization, but often has negative impacts in terms of throughput and/or latency. In an attempt to improve upon the speed and/or latency of virtual machines (VMs), some network device architectures enable one or more virtual machines running on that network device to communicate directly with a network adapter of that device without the aid of a virtual switch running in that devices in software and without the aid of an external network switch. In this manner, latencies and/or bottlenecks associated with the software based virtual switch or external network switches are avoided. In this regard, functionality such as Virtual Ethernet Bridging (VEB) enable inter-VM communication without the aid of an external network switch, and standards/protocols such as VEPA enable intra-VM communication via a specialized external network switch. However, solutions such as VEB and VEPA solve some problems associated with virtualization, they do not solve other problems associated with virtualization and, in fact, creates some additional problems.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.